A Complex Dasein
The Longer Version of an Abstract Accepted by the Northeast Regional Conference on Complex Systems in New York and the Conference on Complex Systems in Italy.
Introudction
There is a shorter version of this submission that was sent to both conferences mentioned above. A longer one prepared for Colorado University’s Complexity, Reduction, and Emergence conference is found below, featuring more context.
Abstract
Understanding a complex system's existence as a totality is crucial to informed observation, interaction, and efforts to influence systems. Significant attention has been devoted to the dynamics of complex systems, emergence, agent behavior, and gaining qualitative and quantitative understandings. However, there has been minimal exploration of the critical question of a complex system's existence. While existence has many definitions, Heidegger's Dasein is used here as an established narrative, though other perspectives, such as autopoiesis, could be used (Morin, 1992).
Introduction to Dasein
Dasein is a system’s "situation in an environment and in time" (Morin, 1992, p.123) and is the German word for "'existence' or 'being-there'" (Audi, 2001, p. 371). Morin (1992) explains, "every physical system is a Dasein (finite honor that we believed to be reserved for man”; p.134). According to Audi (2001), Dasein is not an object with unique properties, but the "'happening of a life course ‘stretched out between birth and death’" (p. 371). Dasein's temporality appears in Holland's (1992) discussion of complex systems: "It is the process of becoming…that we must study if we are to gain insight" (p.20).
Dasein understands its existence before reflection (Audi, 2001; Spinosa, Flores, & Dreyfus, 1999). Audi (2001) explains that unreflective engagement "opens a 'clearing' in which entities can show up as, say, tools, protons, numbers [and] mental events" (p.371).
Dasein has a futural orientation. For example, Dasein knows it will die, and death may occur randomly. According to Inwood (2000), "Dasein's awareness that it will die, that it may die at any moment, means that 'dying,' its attitude toward or 'being towards' its own death, pervades and shapes its own death" (p.69). Dasein reaches ahead of itself to a time it may die and pulls death back into everyday life. A Dasein that does not recognize its death always has unlimited time for work, pleasure, and deferment (Inwood, 2000). Dasein's existence forever takes a stand on its being and fulfills possibilities, and this behavior "constitutes one's identity (or being”; Audi, 2001, p. 371).
Dasein and Physical Systems
The term "physical system" introduced earlier requires clarification. Morin (1992) writes that he can distinguish himself as a "physical system of billions upon billions of atoms [or] as a biological system of thirty billion cells" (p.137). There is an evident importance in using atoms in one case and cells in another. Later, he writes that humans are not physical due to their bodies. Instead, the human is "physical by its being. Its biological being is a physical system" (p.380).
Morin (1993) expounds on physical systems, explaining that they "persist without living: they disintegrate without dying" (p.235). Only complex forms of living organization die. Morin (1999) also identifies self-organizing systems as a Dasein. The self-organizing and the physical system Daseins are merged when Morin (1999) writes that while observers distinguish processes of organization within a system, organization is rooted in "the physical world….The idea of organization, like that of a system, is physical for the feet and mental for the head" (p.114). Morin's (1999) use of feet and head aligns with Segal's (2001) distinction of two discussions, one analyzing a cake as a totality and one while eating it and describing the taste.
Conclusion
When a complex system, such as a social system, comes into being, it is concerned with sustaining its existence. A social system observed at the level of its agents reveals a complex system, as defined by Cillier's (1998) characteristics. Each agent is a Dasein and, therefore, has a unique understanding of its existence. In need of further analysis, existence at the agent level is only briefly recognized here as elemental to understanding existence as a totality. When observed as a complex system, human agents interact, producing emergent properties at one level that combine with those at another to create emergence at the level of totality, such as the system as a Dasein.
At the smooth level of totality is the social system's being as a physical system with a singular Dasein. Enabling Dasein is the system's openness to elements that flow through and perpetuate an identity connected to taking a stand on Dasein's continued existence. As a Dasein, the physical system knows its birth, understands it will die, and integrates eventual death into its existence. The physical system "dies by disintegration" (Morin, 1992, p. 134) while the human agents cease to exist. The disintegration of the physical system as a Dasein and the being of the social system may preface death.
Dasein is a window for understanding the existence of complex social systems through their physical being. However, Dasein is also complex. Some of this complexity is in Dasein’s everyday practice of richly interacting with other complex systems that show up with different meanings. Complexity is also found in the feedback loop from a distant image of death back to existence in the present, and a second loop reaching forward to a death it shapes (Audi, 2001).
References
Audi, R. (Ed.). (2001). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.). USA: Cambridge University Press.
Holland, J. H. (1992). Complex adaptive systems. Daedalus, 121(1), 17-30.
Inwood, M. (2000). Heidegger: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford.
Morin, E. (1992). Toward a study of humankind: The nature of nature (Vol. 1). (J.L. Roland Belanger, Trans.) New York, NY: Pete Lang.
Morin, E. (1993). For a crisology. In E. Morin & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (T. C. Pauchant, Trans., pp. 231-245). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Retrieved 2024
Morin, E. (1999). Organization and Complexity. In E. Morin & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (pp. 109-115). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Segal, L. (2001). The dream of reality: Heinz von Foerster’s constructivism (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1999). Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.